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Recognising madness in others; Relativizing madness in oneself : from lay concepts to therapeutic itineraries

dc.contributor.authorAlves, Fátima
dc.date.accessioned2020-02-07T17:27:31Z
dc.date.available2020-02-07T17:27:31Z
dc.date.issued2012
dc.description.abstractSocieties relate to madness in accordance with their dominant concepts about the world. Modern rationality has created mental illness as an ‘object’ controlled by medicine. In lay knowledge the concepts, attitudes and practices associated with mental illness are culturally distant from the scientific representation of the body, the disease and the patient. The ‘semi-peripheral condition of Portuguese society’ allows us to believe that inside the more universal system of modernity, the explanation of insanity and mental illness in Portuguese society contains modern and traditional elements. This study focus lay knowledge about mental suffering and mental illness. Besides dominant explanations and interpretations, besides professions and politics, which are the lay conceptions and interpretations? Results show that the concept of mental illness includes the one of illness (there are ill people) but it always refuses it (mental suffering is not illness). Lay narratives refer to ‘ill people’ and not to ‘illnesses’, placing the nosologic holistic entity before the disease. Those rationalities categorises people into three kinds: the ‘ill-people’, the ‘week-people’ (these may turn into ill-people) and the strong-people (these ones succeed in the combat with mental suffering, a normal event during life). Social representations emphasize biomedical instead of psychodynamic model. ‘Talking’ is the most valued therapeutic resource. This represents a culture of resistance to psychiatrization (medicalization) of mental suffering. Mental illness narratives (concerning ‘the others’) and mental suffering narratives (concerning the self) represent a confrontation with the self and its identity. Illness and non-illness are entities allowing individual construction or destruction. Briefly, this research found that lay relationship to mental illness is made of diverse, complex and multiple logics. It proposes the concept of lay rationalities, in plural – lay rationalities about mental suffering and illness are not exclusively modern, they are plural.pt_PT
dc.description.versioninfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersionpt_PT
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.2/9225
dc.language.isoengpt_PT
dc.peerreviewedyespt_PT
dc.subjectSociology of mental health and illnesspt_PT
dc.subjectLay rationalitiespt_PT
dc.titleRecognising madness in others; Relativizing madness in oneself : from lay concepts to therapeutic itinerariespt_PT
dc.typebook part
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.endPage9pt_PT
oaire.citation.startPage1pt_PT
person.familyNameAlves
person.givenNameFátima
person.identifier.ciencia-idF41D-6E75-A58D
person.identifier.orcid0000-0003-2600-8652
rcaap.rightsrestrictedAccesspt_PT
rcaap.typebookPartpt_PT
relation.isAuthorOfPublication01db740c-0644-4274-a03f-4c348c8b8ac5
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery01db740c-0644-4274-a03f-4c348c8b8ac5

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